An analysis of the portrayal of WWE female performers in television and social media

Although World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has a strong tradition of women's wrestling, it is only recently that it has been promoting their matches/wrestlers to the same extent it promotes men's wrestling. The WWE continues to change the perception of what a female wrestler and athlete is. Media coverage of female athletes is relatively small and when they are covered they are usually trivialized, sexualized, and gender marked (Bruce, 2016; Cooky et al, 2013; Kim & Sagas, 2014). I provide a brief history of women's wrestling in the WWE and consider the media representation of female wrestlers. Instagram is one of the most popular social media sites, but very little research has been focusing on it (Hu et al, 2014). The purpose of this study is to analyze how WWE portrays women wrestlers through broadcast commentary and social media. I transcribed broadcast commentary of six significant matches and collected screenshots of WWE posts involving women two weeks prior and two weeks post each match under review from its offícial Instagram account. Thematic analysis of the broadcast commentary revealed three major themes (athleticism, history, and hype) and two minor themes (ethnic marking and triv mzation). Thematic analysis of Instagram posts revealed six major themes (sexualized athleticism, active athleticism, passive athleticism, sexualization, intimidation/bad-assery, and camaraderie) Findings suggests that WWE focuses more on the athletic portrayal of their female wrestlers through its broadcast commentary and Instagram account. Its Instagram account has significantly shown more posts of athletic portrayal, but there is still evidence of sexualization despite the number of athletic images. The findings suggest that WWE's representation of women wrestlers is redefining what a female athlete is and why people should be watching women's wrestling.